I wrote this texteo after the video-book was demoed in a new media course at UC Riverside in Fall 2010 and a student asked me why users couldn't comment on the project as they do on YouTube. I wanted it to be clear that this was not due to a lack of interest in user interaction on my part, but rather as an attempt to model more considered forms in the video-book. This is the subject of wehave2saveurparentz's video from LFYT 2010, a plea for live posting, perhaps.

Contextualization

"There is enough hate and oppression out there in the real world—we don't need any extra of it here! While we can't guarantee a completely safe space on Feministing, we can strive for an accountable space. And though we love differences of opinion, there's a way to disagree respectfully and thoughtfully. We expect civility, respect, and patience for your fellow readers and for this space—please remember that we are all here to grow and learn from each other." [cit]

Urban Dictionary jokes that a flame war is "a battle, fight, argument, bitch-fest etc. based on the internet in a forum or message-board and sometimes in an IM Convo. It will usually be started by an angry little dirt-child who thinks the 'opponent' has done something against his or her authority."[cit]

Interactivity, a hallmark and success of web 2.0, has lead to harder conversations and practices concerning the "harnessing of collective intelligence"[cit] according to Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle, five years after they coined the term.

According to The Onion: "In a statement made to reporters earlier this afternoon, local idiot Brandon Mylenek, 26, announced that at approximately 2:30 a.m. tonight, he plans to post an idiotic comment beneath a video on an Internet website ... [he] went on to guarantee that the text of his comment would be misspelled to the point of incomprehension, that it would defy the laws of both logic and grammar, and that it would allege that several elements of the video are homosexual in nature."[cit]

Commenting on YouTube is a degraded form of communication that is rife across the Internet: flame wars, catfights, emoticons. While this is undoubtedly interactive, I attempt to model a more critical, productive, and considered writing about YouTube in LFYT, and I ask the same of you.

To interact with LFYT, use the Voice pull-down menu above to "contribute a new texteo." You can speak back to me and to other users by using text and video, in the vernacular and architecture of this project. I will review all user-generated texteos and will add to the post-tour, USER GENERATED TEXTEOS, all submissions that are productive to the video-book's dialogue.

Please note that you can also help the project by "reporting broken links, videos and typos" using the Voice pull-down menu. Learning from YouTube is the first video-book published by the MIT Press. Their flexibility and innovation have been truly commendable, but even so, the technical, legal, logistical, and operational hurdles raised by this project have been legendary. For instance, the video-book was written in a database, copyedited first in Word, and then on paper, and then corrected (by me) back in the database. The room for (my) human error has been larger than is typical for a scholarly book and, of course, the legal and technical peculiarities of the Internet mean that much of my (linked) content will come and go as others please. Therefore, the Press has decided to wait until March 15, 2011, a month or so after the launch of the video-book, before they authorize (and archive) its official "published" version. Meanwhile, the Press has also generously agreed to allow the text to benefit from its online home, and so the video-book will continue to change, grow, and improve, adapting to both user content and correction as well as my own additions, even after the approved version rests.

Here, I fill you in on some of the backstory of production and publishing as both a plea for your assistance and interaction and as an example of the project's founding commitment to self-reflexive and communal process.

(Navigation note: In the HOW TO USE THIS VIDEO-BOOK YouTour, by hovering your mouse over many of the red words—those that refer to navigational devices for the video-book—the device being discussed will become highlighted with yellow to help you locate it on your screen. Here, and throughout the rest of the video-book, green words are in the Glossary. If you click on them a short definition will pop up. Clicking a red word provides a link off the texteo.)